Maariyamma
is likely to be killed by her children because they cannot afford her. They
will give her a loving oil bath. Several glasses of coconut water. A mouthful
of mud. Perhaps a poison injection. She is just one of many old parents in
Tamil Nadu dying in this way. But no one blinks at these ritual murders.

IN TAMIL, it is known as thalaikoothal. A leisurely oil bath. An exercise in
love and health when given to newborn children, a ceremonial beginning to
festivals, and the universal answer to pitiless summers. In Tamil Nadu’s small
industry hub of Virudhunagar, however, it is the beginning of slow murder. The
marker of the devastating poverty that makes a son kill his own aging mother.

Young family members of this district in southern Tamil Nadu have been pushing
their infirm, elderly dependents to death because they cannot afford to take
care of them. When 65-year-old Maariyamma suspected this might happen to her
too, she moved out of her son’s house two years ago. “I’m not well enough to
live on my own, but it is better than being killed by them,” she says.
Amazingly, there is no bitterness in her voice. Or anger. “They’re struggling
hard to take care of their own children,” says Maariyamma, of her sons. She
places no blame. Her two sons and two daughters are farm labourers who travel
to different villages every sowing and harvesting season. Seeing her children
at pains to run their house, and feed and educate her grandchildren, Maariyamma
knew she was a burden. She knew how it would end if she didn’t leave.

Maariyamma had seen it happen to other men and women of her age. Her neighbour,
Parvathy, had been paralysed at the age of 76. “She had only one son,” says
Maariyamma. “And he was working in Chennai, surviving on some menial job there.
How could he afford to look after his bedridden mother?” One day, Maariyamma
says, Parvathy’s son came, “did it” and went back to Chennai. “What else could
he do?” she asks. Again, in place of anger or fear, there is helpless
resignation. And a strange empathy for the person who might elaborately plan
her murder

Thalaikoothal works thus: an extensive oil bath is given to an elderly person
before the crack of dawn. The rest of the day, he or she is given several
glasses of cold tender coconut water. Ironically, this is everything a mother
would’ve told her child not do while taking an oil bath. “Tender coconut water
taken in excess causes renal failure,” says Dr Ashok Kumar, a practicing
physician in Madurai. By evening,
the body temperature falls sharply. In a day or two, the old man or woman dies
of high fever. This method is fail-proof “because the elderly often do not have
the immunity to survive the sudden fever,” says Dr Kumar.

OVER THE years, other methods have evolved too. The most painful one is when
mud dissolved in water is forced down; it causes indigestion and an undignified
death. Velayudham of Help age India
says the families often take the mud from their own land, if they have any. “It
is believed that this makes their souls happy,” he says.

Dorairaj, a farmer in Satur, confesses that Muniammal, a distant relative, had
been killed four months earlier. She was 78, and too weak to fend for herself.
She was given an oil bath, but somehow survived. After a few days, she was
given the ‘milk treatment’. “When the milk is being poured, the nose is held
tight,” says Dorairaj. This ‘milk treatment’ is often preceded by starvation.
The household stops serving the parent solid food. “When milk is poured
uninterruptedly into the mouth, it goes into the respiratory track. A starving
person cannot withstand even a moment’s suffocation,” says 60-year-old Paul
Raj, coordinator of a district elders’ welfare association.

For those who choose poisoning as their modus operandi, Ganeshan is the man to
call. This middle-aged man lives in Paramakkudy village, and introduces himself
as a ‘medical practitioner’. In reality, he is Doctor Death. Ganeshan sources
and administers lethal injections on demand. According to him, it is simply a
service. “I am not killing anybody who may have a longer life. It is done only
in the last and final stage of one’s life. Why should they suffer in poverty?”
he justifies. Ganeshan defends his ‘profession’ but says he’d rather have some
other means of livelihood. Azhagappan, a small shop owner, revealed that
Ganeshan is not even a trained nurse. “He had worked in a hospital as the
lowest grade attendant for a few months. That’s where he learned to give
injections.” Azhagappan estimates that Ganeshan charges Rs. 300 to Rs. 3,000.
Ganeshan refuses to disclose the chemical combination of his poison.

Though everyone seems to be in the know, thalaikoothal officially remained
unexposed until the death of 60-year-old Selvaraj, of Ramasamipuram village in
Virudhunagar on 18 June this year. Selvaraj, who was bed-ridden due to an
accident, died suddenly. Asokan, Selvaraj’s nephew in Virudhunagar, raised the
alarm on his uncle’s death. He registered an FIR, and subsequently a woman
named Zeenath was arrested for administering a poisonous injection. Prabhakar,
the Virudhunagar Commissioner of Police, admits that it is hard to find any
evidence. “The body was cremated and there is no scope for a re-examination of
the corpse,” he says.

Zeenath has been released on bail and refused to talk to TEHELKA when we met
her in her village, Ramasamipuram. Some villagers claimed that Zeenath was a
‘professional mercy killer’.

A few days after Selvaraj’s death came to light, a newspaper published a report
exposing more mysterious deaths in the district. When the district
administration of Virudhunagar learnt how widespread the mercy killing was, it
ordered an investigation. “It was shocking for all of us,” says V K Shanmugham,
district collector in Virudhunagar. He soon realised that conventional state
responses like arrests, warnings and interrogations would not even scratch the
surface.

Thalaikoothal lay in the indefinable space between crime and desperate acts of
poverty. It was social custom, a collective family decision, a ritual goodbye
to a loved one who had lived a full life. Sometimes, it was the victim’s own
idea. Shanmugham found that many called it a path to “eternal peace”, an escape
from the violence of poverty. “It is difficult to view this simply in a legal
or criminal framework,” he adds.

If thalaikoothal is seen as a crime, an entire village is accomplice. Community
members and relatives not only support the practice, several even arrive a day
before the auspicious oil bath to meet the aged parent one last time. Everybody
knows the man or woman is going to die.

“Nobody questions or reports it to the police. They don’t even see it as a
crime. It is a kind of accepted practice,” says Dr Lakshmi, a physician in
Karyappetti village. Over 75, Dr Lakshmi recollects that she has been hearing
of this practice of killing the elderly for 34 years.

The practice is not confined to a particular caste or community. “The poor do
it, whatever their caste,” says Chandra Devi, the district Welfare Officer.
Most residents are seasonal farm labourers, livestock shepherds or migrant
workers in small factories in the nearby industrial hub Sivakasi. Their mobile
lives make it virtually impossible for them to stay home to care for their
parents.

Killing is indeed a brutal solution to financial burdens, but community members
claim there is no alternative. “It does not mean that they do not love their
parents,” says Chellathorai, the president of Paneerpetty village Panchayat.

Paul Raj, of the district elders welfare association, recently requested the
district collector for government protection for the elderly. “The aged in
these villages are highly vulnerable. We demand government’s immediate action.”
Raj, however, realises that while police forces can protect an aged woman from
her children, what they really need is protection from penury. “If the seniors
had some income, they would not be considered so burdensome,” says Raj. “For
example, if they got more pension, or at least got it regularly, it might give
some respite.”

Kasi, a daily wager, moved out of his son’s house after his wife died. He’s not
sure if he’s 65 or 70, but his shock of white hair, equally white handlebar
moustache, and soil-black wrinkled skin are testament to his long and arduous
life. Kasi had decided to leave when he watched his children grow tired of
tending to their father’s every need. “I’m very fond of them, and can’t imagine
they will try to kill me,” he says. “But anyway, I didn’t want to push them to
any extreme step.” Whether he too would have been invited for that chilling oil
bath some years down, Kasi doesn’t know. And he didn’t stick around to find
out.